LOGINBriony's POVThe shift started small. A conversation that stopped the second I walked into the mess hall. Two warriors near the well who wouldn't quite meet my eyes when I passed. By midday it wasn't small anymore."You need to hear this from me before you hear it from somebody trying to hurt you with it," Sage said, catching me outside the healing house, voice low and urgent."Hear what?""There's talk going around that Marisol didn't run because she was scared of the wedding." Sage glanced over her shoulder before continuing, like even saying it out loud might make it worse. "There's talk you pushed her out. That you wanted the Alpha bond for yourself, and getting your sister gone was the easiest way to make sure it landed on you instead."The air went out of my lungs like I'd been hit. "That's insane. I didn't even know the wedding was happening until Halric burst into the healing house.""I know that. You know that." Sage's j
Briony's POV"Unescorted," Kieran said again, like saying it twice might change what it meant. "You're certain.""Certain as I can be from a distance, Alpha." The scout was still catching his breath. "No chains. No guards flanking her. She walked up to that crossing like she'd done it before."Word moved through the pack house faster than I could keep up with. By the time Kieran called the council together in the war room, half of Ashvale already knew, and the other half was finding out from whoever they passed in the hallway."She sold us out." One of the older warriors, a man named Dorric who never bothered hiding his distrust of me, said it flatly, like it was already fact. "Ran straight to Blackfen the second the treaty got inconvenient for her. Now the little sister gets to pay for it.""You don't know that," Sage snapped from beside me."I know a woman doesn't walk unescorted into enemy territory unless she's already made friends there." Dorric didn't back down. "The whole Thist
Briony's POVKieran came back near midnight, boots caked in mud from the border trail, jaw tight enough that I knew before he said a word that whatever he found out there hadn't settled anything."Well?" I stood up from the chair I'd been waiting in, too keyed up to have actually slept."Multiple sets of tracks. Days' worth, maybe longer." He dropped into the chair across from me, rubbing a hand over his face. "Whoever came through that window last night wasn't the first one scouting that stretch of wall. They've been watching us for a while.""And Halric? What did he say before you got pulled away?"Something shifted in his expression, careful now. "He wrote the treaty clause himself. Forty years back. Pushed the council to leave it open to any Thistlewood daughter instead of naming one specifically."My stomach dropped. "He knew. About the bloodline.""Suspected. That's the word he used." Kieran leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Said he'd been watching your family for decades, w
Kieran's POVHalric led me to his own quarters instead of the war room, which told me something before he even opened his mouth. He shut the door behind us and checked the hallway twice through the gap before he trusted it closed."You're making me nervous," I said."Good." He didn't sit. Paced instead, hands clasped behind his back, an old habit I have seen him do maybe three times in my life, all of them before delivering news he didn't want to deliver. "Because what I'm about to tell you should've come out a long time ago, and I've spent years telling myself it didn't matter. Last night proved me wrong.""Then tell me."He stopped pacing and looked at me straight on. "The treaty clause. The one demanding a Thistlewood daughter for the binding. I wrote that wording myself, forty years back, when I sat on the council that first drafted it."That stopped me cold. "You never mentioned that.""Because it wasn't something I was proud of admitting." His jaw worked. "The clause wasn't pack
Briony's POVBy morning I had four guards instead of one, stationed at my door, my window, and both ends of the hallway, and I hated every single one of them on principle even though none of it was their fault."This is ridiculous," I said, watching a fifth wolf get added to the rotation outside the healing house. "I can't walk to the well without an escort now.""You can't walk anywhere without an escort now." Kieran didn't look up from the notes he was reading, spread out across the war room table like they might rearrange themselves into an answer if he stared long enough. "Not after last night.""I threw a fully grown man through a window with my bare hands. I think I can handle a walk to the well.""You barely stayed on your feet doing it." He finally looked up. "You told me yourself. It didn't feel like healing. You don't know what it costs you yet, and neither do I, and I'm not betting your life on a power neither of us understands against wolves who came here specifically to t
Briony's POVI lay frozen, staring at the window, listening to that scrape work its way slower and more careful than any wind or branch could manage. My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my ears.The latch gave with a soft click.The window slid open an inch, then wider, cold air pouring in around a shape pulling itself over the sill, black-clothed, face covered, moving with the kind of quiet that only comes from practice. I didn't think. I didn't have time to think. My body just reacted, rolling off the far side of the bed as his boots hit the floor."Where is she…" His voice cut off the second he spotted me crouched against the wall.He lunged.I threw my hands up, not to fight, just to stop him, some desperate animal instinct screaming got back away from me and the mark on my palm exploded to life so fast it lit the whole room gold. It wasn't gentle. It wasn't the warm pull I felt healing Faro. This was raw, ugly force, a wall of pressure slamming into him mid-lunge and th







